A film critique merging thoughts of technological development with ethical and political repercussions
With the quickening development of new technologies, it is easy to see the societal repercussions from adopting and implementing them. Often causing the technologies to become political. The flexibility of a technology’s capabilities being manipulated by a singular organization is totalitarian in nature, and merges theories of social determinism with the centralization of a governing body for certain technologies. The short film Blaxites touches on this by exhibiting how rights and privacy can be violated if the power of technology is skewed to be nondemocratic.
In Blaxites, a young woman is trying to receive her medication but is unable to due to a series of monitorizations from the medical organization. The woman’s psychiatrist monitored her social media and found that she had been drinking a glass of wine on her pills. He would not give her any medication until her blood alcohol levels were clean for 15 days, monitored by a wristband. According to Langdon Winner’s definition of social determination in his article Do Artifacts Have Politics?, what matters is not the piece of technology, but rather the social system it is being integrated in (Winner, p.122). A blood monitorization wrist band does not, in itself, “matter” in that it does not have political intention. However, the characteristics and capabilities were taken and used in a way that was political in nature. Winner states that technologies that fall into the social determinism category “… have a wide range of flexibility in the dimensions of material form”, and due to this, “… their consequences for society must be understood with reference to the social actors able to influence with designs and arrangements are chosen”(Winner, p.134). In the film, these “social actors” are the doctors in charge of the capabilities of the wristband, giving them a power over the patient. Which in turn, ties into the concept Winner mentions of centralization of government to properly run technologies.
If a new technology requires that a governing body resides over it to run it, this ultimately gives those people in charge far more control. Integrating the wristband technology and social media monitorization into the practice, the organization in the film infringed upon the patient’s privacy and rights due to an overly centralized and regulated system that was not needed for that particular piece of technology. This particular instance is similar to the plutonium recycling example that Winner offered to explain this centralization often seen with new technology (Winner, p.134). The psychiatrist is protecting the medication almost like our nation would have to safe guard plutonium. Because they do not want these substances in the wrong hands, the goal of trying to keep people safe actually infringes on the rights of the people involved. To explain the need for this centralized system, Winner mentions Plato’s argument that certain tasks are unable to be effective and democratic, such as sailing a boat; There needs to be only one captain (Winner, p.11). The same is true of practicing medicine, there are certain qualified people to understand a patient’s needs and develop a medication plan that is suiting. However, in this particular case the bounds in which the medical professional has a totalitarian right over those surrounding is stretched far beyond what is appropriate. Therefore, causing an unneeded totalitarian-like system introduced with these technologies.
Langdon Winner’s reasoning for why a centralized system may be needed aligns with the goals of the medical professionals in the film. As the system is put into place, the characteristics being used on the armband have created the device to be political itself, thus aligning to the social determinism theory. This control over the characteristics of the watch then allows an overly centralized system to take place. Blaxites demonstrates how a piece of technology akin to social determinism theory and manipulated by a centralized system can lead to the infringement of privacy and rights.
